Maverick and Lucy Devereaux met regularly in a basement hidden beneath the docks. Both spent most of their time in the shadows of Nuword Bay, the capital of Mistralis. Maverick worked as a secret executive, solving problems the court preferred not to acknowledge and known only to a handful of people within it. Devereaux, meanwhile, was an arms broker who sold custom spells and weapons in the black market. In their own way, they were both part of what made Mistralis known as a flourishing kingdom and a dominant naval power.

  Maverick was troubled. The news from the court of Mistralis was not good, the King’s health was weakening and it was beginning to show. There was no clear path to maintain the current order of Mistralis. The Queen was too old, and there was no heir. For her part, Devereaux had managed to get her hands on a new material she had quickly grown fond of, a mineral from Korrath called Dorakstone. She was already working on new designs for her products.

  Maverick held regular meetings with the King of Mistralis. To stay away from prying eyes, they used a hidden chamber behind the throne room.

  Maverick possessed a magical trait he called clairvoyance. By touching people or objects, he could see fragments of their past. Only a few people knew of this ability, among them the King of Mistralis and Devereaux, his childhood friend. It had served the country for several years.

  After requesting permission, he took the King’s hand. A faint glow spread across his fingers as he looked into the past, mostly the recent court sessions. When the light faded, the King asked what he had seen.

  Maverick expressed his concern. Mistralis had survived for years by delaying problems, redirecting them, or buying them off. That strategy would no longer work in a world where information and technologies moved faster than institutions. The King asked if there was a solution. After a pause, Maverick answered that there might be acceptable outcomes. But he would need time to think.

  Maverick needed perspective. There was one man who had seen empires rise, fracture, and rot… and had walked away from all of them. A man currently known as Adrian. The last confirmed trace placed him in Korrath. He asked Devereaux to go investigate directly in Korrath, using the Dorakstone as a means of motivation. Even though the stone mattered at the moment, she was more than happy to accept a solo mission away from Nuword Bay for a change.

  Now without Devereaux’s support, Maverick had to act as well and turned inward. Patterns emerged in the failures of the current government. Missteps too convenient and too well-timed to be coincidence. Decisions he personally validated with the King, meant to stabilize the realm, that instead seemed to compound its fragility.

  Someone was acting with intent. But the goal was still unclear.

  Despite his efforts to remain invisible, Maverick’s clairvoyance worked best in the open. Its cost in mana forced restraint; every use had to justify itself. He could not afford curiosity.

  Maverick prepared for the next council in silence. He drafted several versions of a script for the King, each framed around the question of succession, none naming a successor. Instead, they outlined provisional mechanisms: evaluations of governance, temporary mandates and public measures. Certain advisors were addressed directly, others willingly omitted.

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  Once spoken by the King, the script would fragment across the court through rumor, transcription, and interpretation.

  Maverick’s intent was to see a competition form organically. After the council, he planned to inspect the objects that carried the court’s response to the King’s speech: drafts of emergency proposals, memos, ledgers. Through them, he would trace which version of the King’s words had taken root, and who had prepared for such a moment long before it was announced.

  Devereaux had returned. She had not managed to meet Adrian, but she told Maverick the story of how her last adventure had led her to Lumeria. The tale was wild enough that the two of them spent most of the night joking about it.

  The next day, Maverick asked Devereaux if he could use clairvoyance on her. He was especially interested by the exchange between the Korrathi emissary and the court of Lumeria. So much diplomatic power gathered in a single room was a rare sight. He enjoyed deciphering the faces that spoke without being addressed, the ones others turn toward before answering. He listened for pauses, for moments where authority hesitated or quietly rerouted itself. The surprise guest of the meeting, the Dorakstone, was fascinating as well.

  It clearly had the potential to reshape the political landscape, and it was yet another issue to handle alongside the King’s succession. If Lumeria and Korrath were already circling the Dorakstone, Mistralis could not afford uncertainty at the throne.

  With the King’s health declining further each day, Maverick urged him to think about his succession and prepare a will that clearly defined it.

  An old myth in Nuword Bay claimed that if you asked the lighthouse on the horizon for a favor, the sea would eventually help you. This well-known landmark of the city’s harbor was used daily by Maverick to gather intelligence about the city’s concerns. He listened to the laments of the people through clairvoyance and acted when he could.

  Ships waited in harbor under flags that changed overnight. Cargo manifests were revised, voided, and rewritten. Prices rose without reason, then settled just as suddenly. Maverick was watching from the margins.

  Elsewhere, a guild vote threatened to reroute grain shipments through a single port, leaving most of the profit to one company. An anonymous tip reached the council clerk. The vote failed by a single hand.

  That evening, a riot nearly formed in the lower wards over a false rumor about debased coinage. Maverick used his clairvoyance, touching a stamped ingot and tracing the lie to its source. By nightfall, a quieter rumor spread instead. The crowd dispersed.

  Maverick ended the day by checking on his adoptive parents, petting their dog Lovelle and using clairvoyance to search for any anomalies near the house.

  The lights of Mistralis scatter across the water, fractured but alive. This was the work.

  The King of Mistralis was dead. The official cause was a heart attack. The timing was inconvenient. The details were sealed. With the King’s death, Maverick lost his vantage point. No private audiences. No sanctioned touch. The court closed ranks.

  The reading of the will followed. There was no succession plan, no provisional authority, no contingency. From the fragments Maverick gathered, two possibilities emerged. Either the King never committed to a successor or someone ensured that whatever decision he made did not survive him.

  The Queen assumed temporary authority. Her legitimacy was immediately challenged. Advisors argued. The court tested her resolve. Yet her first decree cut through the noise: a formal succession event would be organized. Either she knew more than she should or she was acting on instinct shaped by conversations with her late husband. Either way, the kingdom was moving again.

  The rules of succession were announced a few days later. Evaluation through governance, influence, and stability. No bloodlines, no automatic claims. Maverick did not wait for the pieces to settle. Driven by his instinct, he left with Devereaux for Lumeria.

  Once in Luxor, he infiltrated the palace, searching for someone he had seen in Devereaux’s past. The search ended before it truly began. While inspecting the palace, Maverick found June walking alone along a corridor, lost in thought. Maverick stepped into her path, greeted her politely, and took her hand before she could refuse. The past unfolded beneath his touch. Maverick smiled. June Benedict might be exactly what Mistralis needed.